


Leave A Lighthouse In The Wild (Cause I'm Coming In)

by geckoholic



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1892610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not about where you've been, it's about where you're going; a look at Sarah, Lucy and Audrey just before they stumble into Haven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave A Lighthouse In The Wild (Cause I'm Coming In)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionheartedgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/gifts).



> This is sort of... odd? I'm so sorry. XD It's sorta-kinda based on your requests for female-centered fic, a look at Audrey's past lives, and character studies, and I hope you'll like it even though it's short and weird and a bit of a stab in the dark when it comes to canon. 
> 
> Beta-read by raynedanser and roseveare. Many thanks to both of you! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Lighthouse" by Patrick Watson.

War has a way of uprooting people, like a storm, tearing them from the place they had in life and planting them anew at random. Sarah realized this long before she became a nurse and worked with veterans. Her father was a soldier. He lived, but he never came home. 

Her mother despaired over it. Sarah took it as a cue, embraced the lessons it offered to teach her: don't get too attached to people or places, there's plenty of both to go around, and listen to your heart. If she were to go looking for the downsides, she could say that it made her a nomad, a wanderer, restless. Unable to form relationships, too – ‘easy’, as her mother called it. 

But Sarah's more the glass-half-full type of person, can't see any reason not to grasp every opportunity life throws at her. And anyway, she stopped caring about what her mother used to say a long time ago. She likes to imagine herself floating on a current that changes with the wind, settling only as long as the force doesn't pick up. 

Today, in the bright light of the afternoon sun, she's once again packing up her meager belongings – nomads travel light – to accompany someone else home, even though she never really knew what that meant. But that's okay. Ever since childhood, she's been searching for her lot in life, the very place she needs to be, but she's in no hurry. Until she finds it, she'll just help others return to theirs. 

On the coffee table in front of her lies another file, another solider for whom the war never ended, waiting for her to accompany him back to where he belonged before he got lost in bad weather. It tells her about the sad fate of one Stuart Mosley: his body has long since been healed, but his mind seems too broken to mend. Now he's released home with no hope of a full recovery. 

Sarah's supposed to pick him up in the morning, then it's off to his hometown in Maine, up on the coast. She's excited. She's never seen the sea. 

 

***

 

Lucy knows what's going on the moment she steps into the principal's office. People have a certain kind of facial expression they reserve for the worst news they could possibly deliver; she remembers it from when her grandfather sat her down to tell her about her parents. 

_Times are hard_ , the principal says when he hands her the folded piece of paper, eyes down to the carpet. _The county's got to keep its money together._ She did a good job, and they'll write her a glowing letter of recommendation, but she was the last assistant teacher they hired so she's the first to go. He's sorry, very sorry. 

The position was crap anyway, Lucy tells herself as she packs up her things – she has a degree and everything, should've gotten a full teaching position. Maybe she should be glad that she got fired before she had a chance to settle into it, grow content and lazy, but that doesn't help with feeling like she hit a dead end. 

She buys the ticket on impulse, when she passes a travel agency on her way home from the mall not a week later. They're new, still offering specials to celebrate their opening day. It's money she should put into her savings account, now that she's unemployed, but... Fifteen minutes later, the ticket sits in her purse, and she can't decide if it's an anchor or a lead weight. 

She grew up in South Creek County. The farthest she ever strayed from it was college, and even then she picked one close enough to drive home every weekend. But she's got no roads left to take here, except for the one away from home. 

Another couple of days pass, and she sits in her cold and tiny apartment, scanning the newspaper for job offers one last time while her mind drifts to faraway places. She can still hear the voice of her grandfather in the back of her head, mocking her decision to become a teacher. _You can't handle kids, Lucy. You can hardly handle yourself._ Too quiet, too withdrawn, too much of a scatterbrain. He was wrong though. Kids aren't the problem, they never have been. It's the adults that Lucy can't quite figure out. 

For as long as she can remember, Lucy wanted to do two things: work with children, and travel. The former didn't do her too much good, so it's time she tries the latter. 

She takes the ticket out of her purse, lays it on the table. It doesn't have a clear destination, one of those special offers that lets you take every available train for so many miles, and all she knows is that she wants to go east. To the coast. New England, maybe. She typed the letter to cancel the lease for the apartment last night; it rests on a cupboard in the kitchenette, signed and sealed. Two travel bags sit by the door, already packed. All she's got to do now is make up her damn mind. 

Tucking the ticket away again, Lucy stands to get that letter, pulls on her coat and heads to the mailbox just outside her building. She turns the thin envelope over in her hand, once, twice, before she puts it in the mailbox. 

 

***

 

It's not like Audrey picked her job for the traveling, but she's come to consider it a perk. Three weeks ago, she was in rural Wisconsin chasing a kidnapper through Midwestern fields. Last week she was in Miami; the sunburn she got there still itches and there's sand in her shoes when she finally sits down to unpack. Next week, she might end up in Texas or Chicago or Washington, there's no way to know. 

The only caveat is the constant jet lag. Back home in Boston it's now around 2 AM, but Audrey's wide awake. She spent the better part of the night so far channel-surfing, grew tired of it, made herself some sandwiches she didn't eat and eventually resorted to unpacking. She scrunches her nose at a shirt that wasn't fresh anymore when she'd returned from Wisconsin but somehow wound up in the bag for Miami anyway, and, with a shrug, throws it onto a pile of clothes next to her overflowing laundry bin. At some point she'll have to take care of that, but she's not even sure she remembers if there's detergent in the house. 

Speaking of which, at some point she should probably find out if she owns a mop. Definitely buy some bookshelves, and a cupboard or two. No flowers though; she tried that, only feels bad if she doesn't remember to water them until they're wilted and dying. In the meantime she could finally hang the framed prints that she did get, but keeps forgetting to put up. 

Chances are she won't do any of these things. Her places always look like she moved in mere days ago, but forgetting to do laundry and living out of suitcases and travel bags is now a necessity and not a personal quirk rooted in an unsteady childhood. So yeah. Perks. 

Audrey shrugs at a pair of dress pants, stuffs it back into the suitcase she just pulled it from and decides that she'll never become tired if she keeps rummaging around. 3 AM finds her digging into a novel she picked up at the airport four flights ago just to forget all about it when packing for the next one. By the time her eyelids become heavy and she starts yawning sunset's already well underway. She falls asleep exhausted but content, and wakes to a knock on her door not two hours later. 

By noon she's on her way to the airport yet again, with another case file and a flight ticket to Maine in her hand bag. She's running late and she's overtired and she had to buy a new pack of underwear between the travel agency and picking up her dry cleaning because she'd run out of fresh ones, but she's too wired to be exhausted. Audrey suspects this case is a test, after Agent Howard's reprimand from earlier this morning. She's not worried. Whatever this case might throw at her, she's ready.


End file.
